Falling for Christmas: Every Holiday Trope Lover’s Dream
With the Thanksgiving season over and the holiday season arriving, nothing beats cozying up to a cheesy Christmas movie with a cup of hot chocolate and a cozy blanket. Now there are plenty of movies to choose from, with more and more being released every year. This year, instead of watching the same Christmas movies for the millionth time, I branched out and decided to watch something new. The queen of cheesy 2000s teen movies, Lindsay Lohan, has dipped her toes back into the spotlight with a leading role in Falling for Christmas. Alongside Chord Overstreet, known for his role as Sam Evans in Glee, the duo embarks on a journey with a laundry list of Christmas movie tropes. From the rich girl meeting a small-town boy to the way too-generous townspeople offering their services. From the Christmas miracle granted by a Santa Claus figure to the weird memory loss that somehow didn’t send her into a coma, these tropes have been beaten to death over and over again. Yet somehow, I still fall for it every single time. Despite the hatred many have for these tired tropes, I think that they make the Christmas movie-watching experience.
At the start, we are introduced to Lohan’s character, Sierra Belmont, who is an heiress to her father’s fortune and her influencer boyfriend, Tad Fairchild. Here lies the first trope: the clunky couple that obviously doesn’t fit together. When the two are on a car ride to do a photo shoot together, Sierra has the holiday spirit and begins to sing, but when Tad shuts her down I immediately knew that I wouldn’t like this man. His
over-the-top influencer personality, or what I should call no personality, creates a perfect antagonist for the watchers to rally their hate behind. While this isn’t my favorite of all the tropes, it perfectly sets the stage for the tension that comes later.
Next comes the amnesia trope. Sierra falls down a snowy mountain and somehow comes out of it with no bruises, no broken bones, and no scratches, yet she has a “mild concussion” that results in the loss of her entire memory. How does this make any sense? It doesn’t, but that is the magic of a Christmas movie. It doesn’t need to make sense. Instead of leaving her in the hospital to heal from her brain injury, she is taken in by the kind stranger that found her, Jake Russell, who is played by Chord Overstreet. He is the lowly owner of a struggling ski lodge who is looking for an investor to help save the inn.
When Sierra takes Jake up on his offer, the two are quickly thrown into one of my favorite holiday movie tropes: the small-town boy meets a rich girl and despite their vast differences, they fall in love. He quickly notices her ineptitude when it comes to normal people things like making her bed, cooking an egg, and doing other general household chores. Now, most sane people would find this quite annoying, but instead, Jake finds it endearing and teaches her how to complete these activities.
Now, why were these two people brought together? It wasn’t pure luck but rather the magic of Christmas, the best holiday trope of them all. When Jake’s daughter wishes on the wishing tree for her widowed father to find love, the Santa figure sees this and makes his wish come true by throwing the two together in the wackiest way. I personally love this trope because it really ties together the idea that Christmas is a magical time of wishes and miracles. It creates the whimsicalness that allows for every silly illogical trope to somewhat make sense because if magic is real why can’t the rest of it be?
Each and every trope thrown into this movie makes the watching experience so fun and easy. Yes, you can easily tell where the plot is going. Yes, you can see right through the cheesy acting. Yes, this story has already been told in a thousand different ways. But the thing is, I don’t care. When it comes to the holidays, I just want to relax after the stress of exam season and not have to think too hard about what I’m watching on the screen. I don’t want to have to focus all of my energy on deciphering some big thinkpiece of a movie. I just want to scroll through Twitter while I watch silly little movies that are filled with holiday spirit and happy endings.
Writer and Artist: Olivia Madrid
